TUCSON, Ariz., May 06, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --  The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of Ohio to defend children against transgender operations. The AAPS brief supports the Saving Ohio Adolescents from Experimentation Act and the Save Women’s Sports Act, enacted in January as H.B. 68 by overriding the governor’s veto.

Ohio Attorney General David Yost filed an action in the highest Ohio court to rein in an overly broad injunction against this law, as issued last month by a county court in Columbus, writes AAPS general counsel Andrew Schlafly. AAPS sides with the Ohio Attorney General and with enforcement of this legislation, which continues to be blocked by the lower court.

“The Ohio Constitution embodies natural law,” AAPS’s brief observes, and “natural law stands against creating special transgender rights.” This brief points out that the “strongest judicial ruling against slavery prior to the Civil War was expressly based on natural law, and was rendered by the Ohio Supreme Court.”

“Children cannot provide informed consent for transgender operations that mutilate them,” Jane Orient, M.D., states as executive director of AAPS. The brief argues that transgender operations on children further violate the requirement of medical ethics to do no harm.

“H.B. 68 embodies the natural law principle of self-defense for the benefit of children against transgender procedures. H.B. 68 is analogous to laws against statutory rape, which no one would claim are unconstitutional,” AAPS’s brief explains.

“Natural law is the basis for many fundamental rights,” Mr. Schlafly states. “Natural law is justice inherent in all humans and manifest in notions of equity, the right of self-defense, and the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.”

The Ohio Constitution and medical ethics “support the protections of children and female athletes embodied in H.B. 68. Far from justifying an injunction against this law, the Ohio Constitution requires upholding it,” the brief concludes.

The Supreme Court of Ohio posts the filings online, in Yost v. Holbrook (No. 2024-0551).

Founded in 1943, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons is a pro-patient association of physicians in the practice of private medicine. Its motto means “all for the patient.”

Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, [email protected] or Andrew Schlafly, Esq., (908) 719-8608, [email protected]